Opening a new world...

Seasons and it's different stories. What is next?

Jan 16, 2025

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
Hello reader, if you have not read story of seasons… there is a lot of mayor spoilers thrown in to this post so please if you want to know what this is about… poke the button below to start the journey, and then come back and read this. THANK YOU!

I doubt there is any interest in my little particular story, but I am a bit proud of myself for pushing this last couple of years on making it happen, even when my life was in shambles, emotionally and mentally speaking.

But I want to open a bit on what was my experience in how this story … basically saved my life in this last few years. Not to mention how much it made me grow up as an artist and writer.

I briefly talked once about it I think little before or after I published the first chapter, and it was a very brief and very rough summary of what to expect from the story it self, but I did not imagine that my brain would go all over the place with the story line. And in the developing of it, a lot of better ideas came to my mind when I was dwindling with new concepts and ideas for the story to not lay flat… I still feel it did but I needed to end at least that Book.

“Once upon a time…”

Like I mentioned before, the story came from the little short story my husband made for me based on a couple of characters I drew a long time ago, a little romance about a couple that where separated by worlds. We had a similar situation, we both lived in different countries when we started to talk so it’s very obvious where the inspiration came from.

But I’ve talked about that before, here the real deal was… to adapt it to a longer story.

It took me YEARS to really write it. Because for it to work I needed to actually know how to write stories, which I never did before… I did but it was all for myself, nothing published or of a sort. Never considered myself a writer or whatever… I never consider even myself talented, I just did my thing.

But for years this story was and still is my biggest passion project, we all have that ma gnus opus and this is mine. My desire for people to love it as much as I did… never did work.

I did artworks, for years… FOR YEARS. And not did really click with anyone… I did try to write somewhat my ideas, but I got discouraged so many time I threw the towel over and over before even giving ti a proper ending. There is probably a bunch of little stories and notes about it all over my old Deviant arts, but they where terrible…

As I mentioned before ENGLISH is not my main language, so it’s been rough to not learn but to get better at doing it. But I’ve worked myself enough to learn a thing or two as I started practicing more and more with this story.

So to make this a legit story I had to go full crazy with notes, data, characters… all the whole nine yards.

“So they both live in this magical world but I don’t know where the hell it is… why it is… but it’s THERE!” me arguing with myself probably.

It has been rather hard for me to explain how the world works, I even tried to make maps but I am BAD at maps ( something I need to work on eventually…). But so far so good I had a premise. These 2 meet and fall in love and they have a conundrum because of it.

The conundrum… was the real ordeal.

To build a Villain.

The original little story didn’t have a REAL villain, in the original the “problem” was that they where going to be separated for a period of time and they had to wait to be together once more.

So I am a sucker for interesting villains, the building of one is so much fun… not that making a hero or a main good character isn’t fun, they have layers to make them complex and compelling. Villains have that also. And I wanted somebody that would make everything miserable is possible.

Crain has been my favorite character to develop, I based it in many things… and many people, in how all good intentions and desires can turn a person dark and in to the wrong path.

The evil uncle has always been the classic antagonist in stories, if it’s not the evil stepmom like in the old fairy tales, the evil uncle is just as good. But I think the fun part of him was to make him what he is at the end, and how he turned out to not just be not the main villain but a puppet. The Gray woman was part of the ordeal from the start, but at the start she was just a henchman of Crain making her not as heavy as she is in the final draft. She was still a spirit that he could use and make her kill people or do whatever but it did not made sense as I built the situation… so I started to look for references in my local folk tales and I came with what it’s called a TULPA.

“A tulpa is a being or thought-form that is created through intense concentration and spiritual practice. In Tibetan Buddhism, tulpas are said to be magical formations that are generated by a powerful concentration of thought. In modern Western culture, tulpas are sometimes used to refer to imaginary friends or hallucinations that are created through the imagination.”

My idea was for Crain to create her from his desires, but turned out to be she was created by someone else and as ages passed she started to jump from host to host to get what wanted out of it which was just to feed herself and exist for eternity. I thought it had a better ring to it and that how the “Gray Lady” was created.

After that it was building a family curse and there it was the new conundrum for the story.

Evolution and changes…

At first I really tried to keep the whole “being separated” problem, mixing it up with the now developed story… but it turned really murky. I felt like a story line has to have some sense and not get tangled along the way, and it’s something I had to learn from experience trial and error on my writing. For that to understand I had to torture myself reading and writing over and over again the draft… which I did not mind, I loved dragging myself again in my world and just sit in my bubble of ideas, it made me feel safe from everything outside… but I got to a point that whatever event in my day life was affecting my story DRASTICALLY.

“yeah… I don’t like this but I’ll save it JUUUUUUUST in case” Me after the 7th changed in the story line after a torturous week at work.

There is a whole lot of things that I avoided and changed, a lot of deaths that when I was reading the last draft ( the one that ended up being published) I said… “huh I though that one character died, OK I guess…?”

So in my personal world I was pretty lost… I may just try and clean up those endings because most of them where good to my standard. But there are legit reasons for me to not use them because of the continuation and other factors did not add up.

For example the ISEKAI factor was added in recent years, the original idea that I had for Nebbia was for her to be Autumn Folk proper like on the original story, but got thrown in to the cold because of the gray lady. But after writing it I came to a full stop, it didn’t ring as well as it did, so I looked for other ways of introducing them. But her backstory from that time I added it to her mother, a character that is just a mystery. Gavin as well was a new added character that I grew fond of him so very quickly, and I wanted him to be more involved, which he will in other chapters.

In my head Kurt Russell voices him… just in my head…

Re-Edit… why do you exist?

Re-Edit chapters are a different way of me to lead the already set story, the same events are told differently because I felt that the first draft was me very immature as a writer and I wanted to deepen the experience. A bit more depth in their personas, Nebbia feeling alienated in her world, Frost more lost in his trauma, the characters in the background with more personality than what they where portrayed originally…

Re-Edit is just me having fun with the story line, that has changed a bit but it’s more now fused with what’s to come on Book of Autumn, just not as cut and dry like the original story, with a better pace and worked a bit better than the original.

What’s next?

I have no idea, I am still writing and working on new pics but for now… I will focus on my other project that we are starting soon and I am drawing and editing as of right now… but it’s not gone, just taking a little well deserved break my characters need.

Not to mention the story of Summer Land that I am still on the works.